I picked up many strange factoids when watching the 1964 sci-fi hokum that is The Time Travelers. First, that they were still making such laughably bad films in that late year which were largely indistinguishable from such fare of ten years earlier. Second, fire extinguishers will make the best weapons in a post-apocalyptic future, as they apparently vaporize mutants. Lastly, the leaders in that future will all be jumpsuit-clad people well into middle age.
That seems to put the lie on the concept of “survival of the fittest”, as they don’t appear to pose much of a physical deterrent against the mutant hordes, which look surprisingly like somebody cloned the lead singer from Midnight Oil several times.
There are also some younger survivors in this future of 2071 A.D., all in their late 20’s, but I suspect trying to be passed off as in their late teens. The disparity between the only two generations suggests a weird and unexplained absence of the generation in between. And this is the entire remaining population of humans on the planet, all conveniently gathered together in this one cave.
Fortunately, the cave has an invisible barrier as protection from the mutants. There will be a neat bit at one point where somebody bounces a Styrofoam rock off of it, which would have been more impressive if the shot right before it hadn’t captured reflections which reveal the barrier is simply glass.
One of the younger humans is Delores Wells, whose appearance was likely warranted only by her being in a Playboy centerfold a couple of years earlier. We even get a surprise glimpse of more side-boob in one scene than would normally be allowed at the time, in a weird bit where she and many other women of a similar age and build engage in such activities as nude sunbathing, the naughty bits blocked by what look to be metal roadside guardrails. I’m surprised some wit didn’t think to also put a sign reading “DANGEROUS CURVES AHEAD!” in the scene.
It is telling none of the older women in the movie are in that bit. The most prominent of the conspicuously absent is Joan Woodbury, who is too busy working on a plan to launch a rocket to carry the surviving humans to Alpha Centari, where they hope to find a new home. When she isn’t focused on that project, she gets to be condescending to visitors who have arrived from the 1960’s. As she says of that invisible barrier: “It’s no secret, but I don’t see how I can make it intelligible to you.” Guess what, lady, we have glass in our own time, thank you very much.
Those visitors are scientists played by a very aged Preston Foster, tough guy Philip Carey (who, while younger than Foster, is no spring chicken, either) and Merry Anders. Also in tow is Steve Franken, who is the obligatory comic relief, except he isn’t funny at all. What is astonishing is Wells has completely latched onto him, which I would say does not bode well for the genetic pool that will maintain these last vestiges of humankind. Franken is even given a deeply irritating fourth wall break when, upon receiving a tray of artificial eyeballs from Wells, looks at the audience and says, “Holy McKee, I thought I was giving her the eye!” At one point, Wells needs to talk to him seriously and begs him to stop being funny. I agree with her request for him to knock off the humor, as he is terrible at it. Also, “Holy McKee”?
Those eyeballs are part of the assembly for androids which are the most memorable aspect of this production, though not for entirely good reasons. These mass-produced humanoids are especially notable for having mouths that are permanently frozen into a perfect “O”, which makes them look like nothing less than inflatable sex dolls. I guess when there’s a shortage of people…
There are various kinds of cinematic trickery done here which involves the robots, all of it apparently done in-camera. An isolated android head on a shelf comes to life. Another humanoid is severely injured in a battle against mutants, and it continues flailing despite missing everything below the top half of its torso. One bit I liked are fast-growing plants that produce oranges from nothing in just a couple of minutes. Alas, those plants do not talk, so they can’t command anybody to “FEED ME!” like Audrey II in Little Shop of Horrors.
The assembly of the rocket also involves all kinds of ruses that are largely low-grade magic tricks somebody was apparently desperate to work into the plot. There’s all kinds of business with separate metal rings that suddenly become joined together, or large metal circles that, with the flick of a wrist, become squares. The latter of those is done by Forrest J. Ackerman, in an odd cameo from the publisher of influential magazine Famous Monsters of Filmland.
So how did our heroes manage to arrive in the future? They had been doing a experiment where they were opening a view window into another time, but an equipment malfunction not only leaves them unable to return to their time, but makes the window more of a door. It’s like the old saying goes, when God closes a door, he opens a window into a terrifying post-apocalyptic future.
It is no surprise dim-bulb Franken is the one who discovers this by accident and just stumbles like an infant into the desert hills beyond. If there is one aspect of this production I am curious about, it is where this was filmed, as this terrain does not look familiar. After you’ve seen enough of this fare, you begin to recognize every square inch of Bronson Caverns, so I guess the filmmakers at least found a different area of southwest California to be the background. And it is out of that desert Anders surprises a couple of mutants who nearly cross from over there and into the lab. She sprays them with that extinguisher I mentioned, and either that dissolved them spontaneously or bad editing simply made them disappear.
Between invading mutants and the building of a rocket ship, our heroes are weirdly sidelined for the most part in their own movie. John Hoyt, as the apparent leader of the elders, admits they don’t have the capacity to repair their “time warp portal” and get them back to their own time. I’m sure I’m not the only Rocky Horror fan to be amused our heroes have been deprived of the opportunity to do the time warp again.
That time window they create is an interesting effect I wanted to single out. I would have bet we wouldn’t see what that looks like from the other side, and yet we get to see our heroes in the desert, standing next to what appears to a square cut out of reality, through which we can see the interior of their lab. It is an interesting visual, and I like how I’m not entirely sure how they did it. An ethereal blue glow around the border of it is icing on the cake.
The Time Travelers is somehow deeply preposterous and rather compelling at the same time. It isn’t a good movie, but it is an interesting one. What is particularly distinctive is an ending I will not risk spoiling. Even with that, I found it difficult to identify with either the group from the present or the one in the future, as both are so poorly defined. As one character says of the situation: “We are the last normal human beings on Earth.” They are not only normal, but quite bland, and the idea of their genes providing the material for any future generations is depressing. And that isn’t even when you potentially throw Franken’s DNA into the mix. Turns out the world may not end in a whimper or a bang, but with a fourth-wall break and a sad trombone sound.
Dir: Ib Melchior
Starring Preston Foster, Philip Carey, Merry Anders
Watched on Scorpion Releasing blu-ray